New Tools to Safeguard the Constitution
by Christian Gomez, Research Project Manager
We’re pleased to announce various new tools you and your chapter should use to safeguard the Constitution. Both this author and Alex Newman, senior editor of The New American magazine, have interviewed various state legislators speaking out against the Convention of States (COS) organization and their fraudulent tactics.
In 2018, Alex Newman interviewed then-state Representative Dorothy Moon, who has since become the chairwoman of the Idaho Republican Party. In the TNA interview (https://gojt.us/3sny), she revealed that COS mailed her letters with petitions with typed signatures purportedly from her constituents in favor of an Article V convention. “I started looking through them, and I noticed names of folks that I knew that were John Birch Society members or really good conservatives that never would have signed on to a convention of states or Con-Con. And so, I started calling them. And sure enough, they had not signed them. And that was alarming to me that we now see fraud occurring on [the part of] proponents for a convention of states,” Moon said. After verifying that many had never signed the letters, she told Newman, “They’re all fraudulent as far as I’m concerned.” Now, more legislators are reaching out to us with similar stories about fraudulent petitions from COS.
Earlier this year, Alex Newman interviewed state Representative Pepper Ottman of Wyoming, who experienced the same dirty tricks in her district. This author interviewed three more state legislators, all sharing similar testimonies:
- Representative Sarah Penn of Wyoming, who delivered powerful remarks against COS and a Con-Con on the floor of the state House of Representatives right before it was defeated;
- Representative Helena Hayes of Iowa, who had a phone conversation with COS co-founder Michael Farris pressuring her to vote for the COS resolution; and
- Senator David Johnson of South Dakota, who received numerous fake COS petitions, including one with his wife’s name!
These and other powerful TNA interviews can be found at https://gojt.us/cp9w. As more interviews are recorded, they too will be added there. We encourage you to use and share this link, especially with state legislators and their staff to expose the truth about COS and to encourage them to likewise speak up and oppose COS’s deceptive efforts to beguile lawmakers into voting for their disastrous Con-Con resolutions. If COS cannot yield honest petitions, how can anyone trust their promises of what would come out of a convention?
Please meet with your legislators and their staff (see the “Stop a Con-Con” article in last month’s Bulletin) and share the new “Legislator Testimonials” webpage with them.
Additionally, continue using the “Article V Convention: America’s Answer?” trifold pamphlet to tell others about the dangers of such a convention. This pamphlet is both an excellent conversation starter and ideal for literature drops in your area. Please refer to the “Stop a Con-Con” and “Birching 101” articles in the March JBS Bulletin for more about doing literature drops in your area.
Lastly, we now sell on ShopJBS pocket-sized hardcover copies of the Articles of Confederation. This slim, 32-page booklet is not only a quick and educational read about the United States’ first charter of government, but Article XIII (pp. 24-25) explains how any alterations to the Articles of Confederation had to be approved by both Congress and the legislatures of all 13 states before they could be adopted, which was not done. In like manner, COS and other Con-Con proponents today point to the ratification clause of three-fourths of the states (found in Article V of the U.S. Constitution) as a supposed “safeguard” from radical amendments or a new constitution being ratified.
We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the Articles of Confederation, especially Article XIII. The pocket-sized Articles of Confederation booklet would be a great addition to your own personal Con-Con toolkit for educating others about the need to stop a Con-Con. Our ultimate goal is to encourage lawmakers to enforce — not change — the Constitution as written. An Article V convention is no substitute for a constitutionally literate and educated electorate.